Lets look at\u00a0carbon, the atom this class is about.\u00a0 Recall that it has atomic number 6, which means it has 6 electrons.\u00a0 Remember that the rows, or periods, of the periodic table reflect the outer electron orbital.\u00a0 In the second period, carbon has 4 electrons in its outer orbital.\u00a0 These are the electrons that are available for bonding. \u00a0The carbon atom wants to eventually achieve 8 electrons to fulfill the Octet Rule, so it needs to make 4 covalent bonds.<\/strong>\u00a0Below is how the electrons are filled in their orbitals. \u00a0Recall that the columns, or groups, of the periodic table reflect the type of electron orbitals present in the atom. \u00a0The red block is the location of\u00a0carbon, which indicates that carbon has 2 s-orbital and 2 p-orbital electrons.<\/p>\n These electrons are arranged in an energy diagram according to their energy, shown below<\/p>\n But it we consider the molecular shape of methane (CH4), we will observe it as tetrahedral, where all 4 C-H bonds appear to be equal, so how do the electron energies become equal?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We explain this observation by assuming that the s-orbital and p-orbital electron energies, while different merge into an sp3 hybridized orbital<\/strong>.\u00a0 In this model, the 2 s-orbial and 2 p-orbital electrons merge into something that resembles a dumbbell.\u00a0 Since all of the orbitals have the same shape and energy, the C-H bonds of methane can be equal and form the observed tetrahedral orientation.\u00a0 There are three types of hybridized orbitals for carbon;<\/p>\n![\"AO](\"https:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/AO-fig-1.png\")
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